5 Decisions - & the Best of All
Possible Worlds

All four Bible lessons raise the issue (as do probably
most Bible passages) of human failure. That is, of course, because salvation is
meant to be the remedy for our monumental human failure -- the Fall. And the
Bible is all about salvation. We are in a state of affairs from which we are
incapable of extricating ourselves. We have trapped ourselves in a labyrinth out
of which there is no exit, no escape. And the devil prowls about seeking whom he
may devour.

The Bible and centuries of tragic experience both teach
us that we are incapable of making our own remedy. Most of our remedies just
compound the problem. It takes, as we say, the grace of God. God must intervene
in our labyrinth, enter our self-entrapment, and lead us out. We are not capable
of solving the problem on our own.

But to get a handle on our failure, we must first get a
handle on what success would mean. Failure is the warping of, or rebellion
against, success. Would we recognize success if we should bump into it? What
would success look like? If the Biblical version of success is the real one, the
efforts of the world have been radically wide of the mark. We do not know even
where to aim.

The Fall was out of creation. We fell out of creation
because we (represented in Adam and Eve) chose not to be creatures, dependent on
and obedient to God, but rather to be independent, autonomous decision-makers.
We want to do it on our own. We dislike being dependent and we dislike having to
be obedient. But that did not, and does not, change the fact that we are
dependent beings, that we need many things to happen merely to survive, let
alone flourish, which we do not and cannot control. We are, and always will be,
dependent beings.

If we could "be like God" as the serpent promised in the
Garden, we would not need God. We would be able to manage on our own. That, of
course, was precisely the illusion he successfully implanted in Adam and Eve.
But rebelling against God did nothing at all to make us really independent, it
merely made us dependent beings trying to carry on the illusion of being
independent. Because we were still dependent, but no longer on God, we
would as Paul says in Romans 1, begin to worship the creation rather than the
Creator. And that, as God warned Adam, meant certain death. A false god will
always betray you into the opposite of what he promises.

So salvation is about our returning to be creatures
again, agreeing that we are creatures, that we need God for our very existence,
and that He and He alone can define our purpose for existence. We must learn
again how to trust and obey.

The Western Church during the late middle ages began to
slide off center and become sin-oriented rather than creation oriented, focusing
on how awful things were rather than on the vision of God as both Creator and
Sovereign. They often emphasized the Sovereignty of God at the expense of the
Creator part. So the emphasis was on our compulsive disobedience and sinfulness,
rather than on God as Creator who holds us, even as sinners, in the palm of His
Hand. God creates nothing but good.

So, with a hyper-masculine God, many Christians fell into
a new legalism, attacking not their sins, but their very being. We began to
think that repenting meant putting oneself down, often resulting in self-hate.

No one ever told me to hate myself, but I nevertheless
grew up with a confusion between repentance and self-rejection. Many, perhaps
most Christians do. I was well into my adulthood before I realized what I was
doing and repented of hating myself.

Self-rejection does not aid repentance, it prevents it.
As Jesus implied in the 2nd Great Commandment, unless I love myself, I will be
incapable of loving my neighbor. Self-hate will always prevent you from getting
at the real problem, not your being, but your attitudes and your behavior. The
name Satan means adversary, devil means slanderer, and Jesus calls Satan the
father of lies. Satan wants you to hate yourself because self-hate becomes
compulsive and paralyses you from serving God or loving your neighbor.

But creation, not the Fall, happened first, and there is
a goodness to creation that no creature can remove. Anything God makes is good.
It is therefore always right for you to be yourself, or for me to be
myself. It is not our being that is in question, though it may be bent
out of shape by our sin. Our being is what Jesus came to save. It is our
behavior which God is challenging. Sin is behavior, not being, not
existence. The goodness of creation, as it were, surrounds the Fall. The Fall
cannot undo the fact that we are, and will always be, creatures of God. It is
precisely that which makes us redeemable despite the Fall.

Back in the 1980's, I was chaplain and teacher at a
school in Connecticut for troubled youth. It had an outward bound,
nature-adventure type of discipline, and the students were under strict control.
Many of them, of course, resented it, and made their resentment known. They
wanted to be free to make their own decisions.

It occurred to me as I pondered the situation that there
are indeed five decisions which they could make, and if they made them, they
would become truly free individuals. If they did not make them, they would
always be slaves to their passions, their false goals, and illusions of false
independence. As I thought about these decisions over the years, I discovered
that the decisions outline the way in which we can cooperate with the salvation
offered by God to get us out of our troubled state.

They can be, in effect, an acceptance of that salvation,
but they are put in generic terms, raising issues common to all mankind, not
just to Christians. The answers we give to these issues will be either a
positive response to God, the Biblical answers to the issues, or they will be
some version of a pagan or secular response. But they effectively challenge all
persons with the five crucial issues of all living beings.

The five decisions to be made are these:

1. To be a truth-seeker at any cost to myself;

2. To rest the weight of my being, my dependent
nature, on a completely stable & secure foundation (if I can find
one...);

3. To be an open, honest, living-in-the-light,
truth-speaking person in all my relationships;

4. To find my reason for existence and to pursue
and obey that with all my heart, mind, soul, and strength;

5. To do all those things with a loving spirit.

One can give various answers to any of the decisions. But
the Biblical Godly answer is the only answer that leads to life. Any less than a
full commitment to a Godly answer will in the end, sink our ship.

A few weeks ago, we started our "Living in the Light"
group at the home of a parishioner, beginning with a period of teaching, and
then sharing and reflecting on where we are with our personal spiritual growth.
We will soon be digging into these five decisions, and learning to put them to
work in our lives. We still have room for three or four more.

The decisions are a good plumb line to hold up to
yourself to measure your spiritual growth; they are a good test for one's
emotional stability and wholeness; they make a good series of questions to ask
yourself when you are confused, depressed, fed up with life, etc. or when you
are confessing your sins, to see where you might be failing. You can run through
the list and ask the Lord to show you where you are being tripped up -- or
avoiding the issue.

Notice that truth-seeking comes first. That is
because, if we do not make truth our first priority, we will fail in all
subsequent tasks. We will not know where to find a truly substantial and secure
foundation for our dependency; we will not know what it even means to live in
the light, or what our reason for existence might be; and we will not know the
right meaning of love, as the world continually demonstrates. Truth-seeking --
at any cost to ourselves, is the foundation for all else.

Truth-seeking means a humble spirit, a willingness to
know if I am wrong. If I am wrong, I want to know. I am open to
legitimate correction. A teachable spirit. It means a passion for living in
reality, come what may.

Secondly comes the dependency decision. We are by
nature dependent beings -- creatures There is no possibility of becoming
autonomous and self-sufficient. We will always need a whole host of things
beyond ourselves going right to even survive, let alone live the abundant life.
Most of those things we need are far out of our control.

In our fallen world, we are always at risk because there
is no place upon which to rest our being and our dependency. So relationship
becomes a place of vulnerability and danger. Hence we invent defense mechanisms,
fig leaves, and run for the bushes.

If we cannot find a safe and secure foundation upon which
to rest, then we are eternally at risk -- or, as eternal as we are lucky enough
to survive. Survival then is largely matter of luck and fate. And life is a
power struggle against the incessant negative forces surrounding us.

And, in the end, they win.

But if our being is resting on a secure foundation, one
which the negative circumstances of life cannot touch, then we can be secure in
our relationships. Our being is no longer a question mark. We are no longer at
risk in that deep, vulnerable way. That is what chapter 8 of Romans is about --
the deep foundations of God upon which we can depend, the Hand of God which come
from outside the circle of creation making us invulnerable to the slings and
arrows of outrageous fortune.

But finding this place of rest depends on our having
first made the truth decision -- so that we can discern between true and false
dependencies.

Thirdly comes the living in the light decision -- to
be open, free in one's communications, speaking the truth, not hiding or
pretending. A WYSIWYG person. What You See Is What You Get. Transparent. Able to
be fully yourself before other people.

Imagine a world in which all persons were open in that
sense. What difference would it make to you if you knew that all the people you
would meet today would be of that caliber?

But we cannot become that open and free unless we have
already made decision #2, to rest on the Hand of God. Only in that deep security
of our inner being can we risk openness to the chanciness of life. In that
security, we cannot have the rug pulled from under us. We are standing on God's
rug, not the world's rug. I no longer need the world's permission to be myself.
We are standing on God's ground, not the world's ground. We can be hurt, we can
feel pain, but we cannot be destroyed. We can outlast any evil that attacks us.
More than that, we can grow through the attack and come out stronger than we
were before.

The fourth decision is to seek our reason for being,
and to pursue it with all our heart, mind, soul, and strength. We are to find
out why we are here, which is the only objective basis for moral standards. And
our reason for being comes from only one place -- from the mind and heart of the
One who gave us our being. Only He can know why we are here -- because it is
His original and originating intention, and nobody else's, that we exist.

That is the significance of the law, as Jesus responded
to a query one day. The law is all about the meaning of our existence, why we
are here.

But one can do this fourth decision with credibility only
if he has first done the third. For, if one has not determined to be open and
honest, his vow of obedience is at best suspect. Of what use is a vow of
obedience from a person who has not yet determined to be clear about his inner
intentions, to be transparent, to have a reliable word?

And the fifth decision emerges right out of the
fourth -- to do all things with a loving spirit, to become a lover of
souls. That, of course, is precisely what Jesus said is indeed the very meaning
of the law. The two highest laws in the cosmos are the laws of love -- love of
God and of neighbor -- by one who has first learned to love him- or herself.

One can successfully make this fifth decision only if he
has first made the 4th decision to obey God. If we do not take on a loving
spirit as an objective obligation, a command, not just "a good idea", our love
will not survive the constant temptations to compromise, to pull back in the
face of conflict and disappointment. Love and duty are not contraries, they
support one another as the law and the grace of God.

So each of these five decisions needs and builds on the
previous ones and supports the following ones.

Notice that truth comes first, and must be the foundation
of all the others, and that love comes last, the most difficult of all,
requiring the most preparation (the four previous decisions). Love is not
something you "fall" into, it is something you die into, the death to
self, which is accomplished as you go through the decisions. We do not
begin life as loving persons, we begin as self-centered, egotistical, demanding
persons. That is why God makes babies small. Imagine if we came into
the world fully grown and that self-centered! We learn to love with agape,
self-giving, love through our life journey, on the way of the cross, at each
decision repenting, giving something of our life back to God -- and receiving it
back again.

Yet, the making of these five decisions is the
loving of oneself, it is our part in cooperating with the formation of oneself
in the Image of God, treating oneself to the highest possible good in all
existence -- at the invitation of Him who is the highest good -- the Way, the
Truth, and the Life.

And so we find our identity -- we become (1)
truth-seekers, (2) stable persons down to the very root of our being, (3) honest
and transparent persons, (4) obedient to Him who commands the highest, and (5)
lovers of souls, living in the Kingdom of faith, love, and hope.

This is what success might look like -- and a vision of
how God reaches down into our lives to draw us back to Himself -- to remake us
in His image, the Image of God.

The best of all possible worlds. It does not get any
better than that.